


hold on, darling

by awakeanddreaming



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-02-27 10:33:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awakeanddreaming/pseuds/awakeanddreaming
Summary: It's kind of like soulmates.This first part of herself she gives him is her hand.





	1. this body is yours, this body is yours and mine

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to dedicate whatever this is to my sister, who put up with me babbling at her about VM fanfic and helped me make sense of my messy, messy thoughts. So, thanks a billion X, this is for you. Also, I will drag you down into this rabbit hole one day. 
> 
> I would also like to thank everyone who read this, gave me advice, put up with all my questions and my constant need for validation. 
> 
> Work and Chapter titles are from the song Mess is Mine by Vance Joy, which was the original inspiration for this piece.

**_This body is yours, this body is yours and mine_ **

 

It’s kind of like soulmates.

 

_Seven_

This first part of herself she gives him is her hand.

She pulls off her fluffy pink mitten and offers her bare palm up for him to take—as instructed. His hand is sweaty and he awkwardly fumbles around with her fingers in his until they find a comfortable hold. They skate three laps around the rink, hands clasped tightly together, and don’t say a word the entire time. She tries to say hi, to say anything really, but her tongue feels dry and swollen, like sandpaper in her mouth.

So instead of talking, she listens to the scraping of their blades as they carve into the ice and the humming of the fluorescent lights that flicker brightly above them. He squeezes her hand a little bit harder when he wants to go faster and she in return squeezes back gently when she wants to slow down. They race around the rink with joined hands, silently spurring each other on. _How fast do you think we can go?_ she asks with a tug on his fingers. They don’t need words, they instinctively know how to communicate with touch. It should be weird, to be able to _talk_ without talking with a boy she just barely knows, but it’s not. It just is. She’s not old enough to know to question it.

When they come to a stop in front of his aunt—their coach— he doesn’t immediately give back her hand. He pulls it in towards his own body, like he wants to keep it. He plays with her fingers, like he is studying them, like there may be a test on the shape of her hand later. He tickles her palm with the pads of his fingers and when he reaches the inside of her wrist, running his thumb over the sensitive skin there, she giggles. He smiles at her then but drops her hand.

It feels cold now that he’s let go and she finds even though he’s a boy she doesn’t mind him having her hand in his. Even when he won’t give it back. She is seven and doesn’t really reflect much on what it means that she has given this boy her hand to hold and that it feels so comfortable--so natural. Doesn’t think about the fact that she wouldn’t mind him holding her hand every day, because now that she has it back it feels foreign, as if it isn’t really hers, not anymore. As if her hand had been made to be held by his.

There is a tingling in her fingers, a little tug at the ends of them that she can’t really explain and a small red mark right there on her wrist--where he’d run his thumb over her skin to tickle her--that just won’t fade. It looks almost like a small burn. A brand. If she were to know what that meant. The tingling persists until a week later when at the rink they are made to hold hands again. They skate in a pattern dictated by his aunt, her hand snug in his, and she feels whole. And she swears when he touches her, that tiny red thumbprint on her wrist heats up and spreads a pleasant warmth throughout her body so that she can’t even feel the chill of the rink. She’s cold again, as soon as he lets go.

Their mothers and his aunt are huddled together a few feet away while she and Scott sit next to each other untying their skates. She still isn’t as practiced at it as some of the older skaters, or even Scott, so it takes her a little bit of work to unfasten the laces from each eyelet. Scott stays next to her, even after his skates are off, kicking his socked feet along the ground—his socks don’t match, she notices, one is a dark blue, while the other is black. He shuffles closer to her on the bench, so that that their arms arm brushing against each other and she feels flooded with warmth again.

“They are talking about us,” he whispers, nudging her shoulder. He is wearing a lopsided grin, and his voice carries through the open space, an excited echo, even though he is trying hard to be quiet.

She nods, still not sure how to speak to this strange boy she feels so drawn to.

“They just fit,” Carol says, a hint of excitement and maybe pride in her own voice. “From their heights, to their strides, even their looks.”

Their moms both nod. They saw it too. She strains to hear what her mom says. She doesn’t quite catch it or what Alma, Scott’s mom, says next. But then her mom is looking at them with this strange sort of smile that is both happy and sad and maybe a lot of other things in between.

“They really are a perfect little pair,” she says with a sigh.

“Hear that,” Scott says from beside her. “We’re perfect.”

She shakes her head and finds herself smiling, showing off her missing front tooth, “Not perfect yet. ‘Cause I’m better than you. But maybe one day, when you catch up.”

It’s the first things she’s _really_ said to him and he bursts into laughter. A warm all consuming laugh that shakes his little body, and hers next to it. The warmth in between them grows and she can’t help but start laughing right back at him.

“No way. I’m way better,” he says between giggles. “I’ll prove it, next time.”

Her smile grows even wider at the thought of _next time._  


_Nine_

He kisses her at the carnival. She isn’t expecting it and turns her head. He was aiming for her cheek, but he captures the corner of her mouth with his lips instead. She can feel herself blush furiously, a bright pink heat rising into her cheeks. He pulls away quickly as if he’d stolen something from her--like the flowers he just gave her, taken from a bucket next to the ice. Maybe he did kind of steal the kiss, she hadn’t been expecting it, _but,_ she thinks, _you can’t steal something someone would have given you anyways._

And that’s when he takes the right hand corner of her smile.

He shoves his hands deep in his pockets and looks down, kicking his toepick into the black rubber mat leading to the ice. His own cheeks are probably just as red as hers but he is trying desperately to hide them.

“Good luck, Tutu,” he says with a small smile, chancing a glance back up at her.

“Thanks, Scott,” she is just barely able to get out over the little lump forming in her throat. She turns around while offering him a little wave goodbye.

It’s her turn to go onto the ice for her solo and she realizes she doesn’t even have a chance to feel nervous, because all she can feel are his lips pressing into the corner of hers. There is a tingle there, just like the one in her fingers, that slight tugging just in the tips, that she’s learned to ignore when her hand isn’t held in his. She’s willing to bet that right there, that little corner of her smile will be tinted just a little darker red than the rest of her lips. Just like that little red spot, her mom said looks like an angel's kiss but she knows is from him, on her wrist that never went away.

She doesn’t tell anyone about the kiss but finds herself rubbing the corner of her lips on the drive home from the arena. She has her feet up on the back of her the passenger seat and a book in her lap, though she can’t focus on the words right now, all she can think about is this warm fluttery sensation in her chest and the bashful look on Scott’s face after he kissed her. The flowers he’d snatched for her are sitting on the seat next to her.

“Tess, sweetheart,” her mom starts from the front seat, her tone serious. “Alma and Carol and I were talking, how would you feel about skating with Scott more times a week?”

“I think I would like that,” she says before she’s fully processed the question. Though it isn’t something she has to think about. The right side of her smile twitches upwards in a little half smile.

 

_Fourteen_

She gives him the rest of her lips one day when they’ve been living in Waterloo for nearly a year. She’s determined, compelled by some unexplainable force, that he should be her first _real_ kiss. And that it has to happen today. They’d been practicing their short dance all morning before school and the characters they are playing are much more mature than anything they’ve ever done before, but Tessa still feels like a child. She feels like an imposter. A little girl in adults clothing. She’s never even kissed a boy before, she’s not sure how she’s supposed to act when he pulls her in close, his lips centimeters from hers. Even if it’s only for a split second.

She needs to know what it feels like. And it needs to be him. The right hand corner of her lips, that little spot he claimed five years earlier, itches when he gets too close. And she knows that the rest of her mouth longs to feel the press of his lips. It makes no sense, really, if she were to try to explain it to anyone else. She just knows that this part of her is meant to be his too, just like her hand. She knows that it will feel right, that it will fill her with that same warmth that holding his hand always offers (probably even more) and she just knows, even though they haven’t kissed properly yet that it will feel natural--just like everything else with him does.

She corners him in the locker room after their off ice practice late that afternoon. He looks at her, his brows raised, forehead crinkled in that way that he does when he isn’t sure what’s going on in her head.

“I want you to kiss me,” it comes out like a demand, and maybe it is. Her voice is stronger than she meant it to be, firmer than she thought she could sound.

“W-what?” he stumbles to try to find anything else to say. His eyes are darting between her own and her lips and she thinks, briefly, that maybe he feels the same pull that she does. Like their lips are magnetic poles being drawn into each other and they are too close now to resist.

“It’s for our skating,” she states, a half truth. “I need to know what it’s like, so that I know how to act on the ice.”

They both stand there staring at each other for a few beats too long for it to be comfortable. Both wondering the same thing, where did the Tessa of seven years ago, the one who couldn’t even formulate a simple _hi_ to him _,_ go. Maybe, somewhere along the way after giving him little bits of herself, she’s taken some things from him too, like just a little bit of bravado.

“Please?” she says, finally, when the silence has been too much, her voice much quieter now.

“Okay,” he says. She looks in his eyes, to make sure that he really means it, and in them she thinks that she reads, _anything for you, Tess._ But that’s probably just her muddled teenage brain seeing what it wants to see.

Then he is crossing the room towards her, his strides long and purposeful. He cups the back of her head on instinct, his other hand coming to rest on her hip while he pulls her in and then his lips are crashing against hers. His lips are soft and warm and he tastes like bubblegum and the warmth from his lips seeps through her like she knew it would. Her fingertips tingle and she has to grip his arm. She feels heat in her wrist and on her lips and it is wonderful, but also too much. Too all consuming for a fourteen-year-old and her first kiss. So she pulls away, lips still burning.

She swears she never needs to wear lipstick after that day, her lips always bitten perfect pink.   


_Seventeen_

He lays his claim on that juncture between her neck and shoulder somewhere between seventeen and eighteen. Nuzzling his face into the space there, like that spot was made just to cradle his head. She is pretty sure at one point at the end of a competition he bites the skin there, and she is filled with such a warmth that she literally melts against him. Like the wax of a candle and he is the flame.

She is still feeling warm and boneless by the time she gets back to her hotel room. He walked her there and gives her a parting hug, his nose finding that spot, rubbing against sensitive skin and breathing her in.

“See you later, kiddo,” he says, with a squeeze of the hand as he continues on to his own room.

It’s as she is getting into the shower that she notices the mark. A little patch of discoloured skin—the colour of her blushing cheeks—right there in the crook of her neck. It kind of looks like the imprint of his lips, a kiss she thinks, and for some reason that makes her smile. But it scares her in turn, that another part of her is tied so irrevocably to him. She can feel the pull of it. Like a lines of invisible thread tangled up and tied to him, one for each part of her that she thinks is his. She runs her finger delicately, it is warm to the touch, just like his skin always is. Like he is alight from the inside.

Since she kissed him three years ago, she’s been pulling back on that force she feels drawing her into him—a game of tug-o-war. It was too much then, still is, to feel like parts of herself belong to a boy she met at seven years old. Even if, sometimes, she thinks, she would like to be his.

_No._ She doesn’t belong to anyone. The thought is resolute. Even if sometimes she wonders if he needs her just as much as she needs him. Like maybe he feels the pull too. She thinks it’s true, when the next day he is buzzing with energy, practically overflowing with it, as he bounces and nearly vibrates next to her. Until he draws her into his arms and tucks his face neatly into her neck and shoulder. She feels the gentle press of his lips right there, where she knows he marked her yesterday, like a breath. And just like that he deflates and she is filled with that sense of warmth he always leaves her with. Like the heat that was filling him, threatening to boil over inside was transferred to her. He is left calmer and she feels warm and grounded all the way to her toes.

He grabs her hands as he pulls away, a relieved smile gracing his lips.

“I’m ready now, if you are,” he says, giving her fingers a little squeeze.

“Always,” she says, squeezing back with the same gentle pressure.   


_Nineteen_

She hands over the rest of herself, all the parts not yet touched by him, or anyone else, the night before her surgery. It’s desperate and a little bit messy and she can’t tell who needs who more. But it’s also perfect, because it’s him, and it’s beautiful. A beautiful mess and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She knew this part of her had to belong to him too, she knew it from the first time she kissed him. She _really_ knew when she tried to kiss any boy who wasn’t him and felt hollow, empty, uncentered and like she might just float away, like it wasn’t really her these kisses were happening to. Not that those kisses were necessarily bad but they weren’t Scott, they weren’t right. Everything thing with Scott was always heated and too much, anything with anyone else left her chilled and was just never enough.

Even when it seemed more than she could handle, being close with Scott always made her feel warm and whole. She needs that now. To feel warm and put together. She shivers against the ice on her failing legs, the melting blue gel packs draping over her shins. She needs something so overwhelming that she’ll be able to ignore the pain and the fear muddling her brain—all the what ifs that won’t leave her alone.

An hour after her mom had unceremoniously kicked him out, citing the need for Tessa to be up early for her surgery—though Tessa couldn’t help but notice the tight line in her mom’s brow and the subtle set of her lips into a frown when she saw how closely cuddled in to Scott’s side Tessa was, as they watched a movie on her laptop—Scott climbs the tree outside her window, like the hero in some sort of teenage romance movie. He taps his knuckles on the glass just loud enough for her to hear. Without questioning what either of them are doing she is out of her bed, opening up the window and pushing out the screen so he can climb inside.

Neither of them say a word, they don’t need to. He grabs her wrist first, his thumb brushing over the little red mark he unknowingly left there years ago, applying a gentle pressure. His whole body sags in relief, like touching her, feeling her pulse under the pad of his thumb, calms him, puts some of his own fears at ease. It makes her feel powerful, if only for a moment, that her body can do that for him. He pulls her into him and bows his head, his lips finding that special spot— the last place he’d left his mark on her. Then the whole world washes away around them.

Tessa isn’t sure who moves first, who is the one to actually press their lips against the others, but they are kissing. His mouth working in tandem with hers. With one hand still firmly wrapped around her wrist the other climbs up her spine, seeming to count each vertebra on the way up to cup the back of her neck, allowing him to guide her head to deepen the kiss. She relaxes her whole body into him and he holds her up. He _never_ lets her fall.

Her hands find their way to the back of his head, one tangling into his hair, the other resting just above the collar of his t-shirt. When she pulls lightly at the hairs at the nape of his neck, he moans into her mouth and she swallows the sound. It tastes pure and sweet, like a young innocent love, and then a bit acrid, like strong coffee—an intensity she isn’t used to, but craves anyways. She’s entirely overwhelmed, but needs more. More points of contact, more of him, just more, more, more. She’s burning up, but wants to walk directly into the flames anyways.

He seems to understand exactly what she needs as both his hands migrate to the hem of her shirt, his thumbs sneaking underneath and rubbing at the bare skin stretching over the jut of her hip bones. She hums against his lips, pulling away slightly, breathing deeply, cool air rushing to fill her lungs—that she didn’t realize were scorching. She searches his eyes with her own, hoping the look she gives him tells him what she can’t quite manage in words, _take me, make me yours, make me forget._

He does.

His hands and mouth are everywhere, leaving invisible marks on every inch of her skin. He kisses her, and then he _kisses_ her, bringing her to the brink with his lips wrapped around her and his fingers stroking a spot inside her she didn’t know existed. She feels like she is on fire, burning from the inside out, entirely consumed by the spark he ignited. She thinks it isn’t supposed to feel this good your first time. But, it’s him, so she doesn’t question why it does. Just likes she’s never question the marks he’s left on her or the parts of herself she feels are intrinsically connected to him.

“Need you,” she manages, the words puffing out on a sigh and swirling with her breath, mixing with his in the humid air of her childhood bedroom. “I need you, _please_.”

He releases her, his fingers sliding out from inside of her, leaving her feeling cold and empty—yearning. Then he is flipping them, with the same calculated grace and strength that he brings to their lifts, so that she is straddling his hips, hovering over where she can feel him straining in his jeans—his body pulls up to meet hers, like maybe the magnetism she feels towards him isn’t one way. She runs the pads of her fingers over his bare chest, his shirt removed by her somewhere along the way, though she doesn’t remember when.

She falls forward against him, pressing her naked chest against his, her ribs rising and falling in opposition to his— like a teeter totter. He reaches around her to struggle out of his pants and boxers, hesitating  for a minute, like maybe he’s forgetting something, but then she’s sitting up and lining her hips with his.

“I need you,” she says again, she doesn’t know why she keeps repeating it, but these are the only words that her tongue can find.

“I’ve got you, Tess,” he says softly, one hand gently cupping her cheek, thumb stroking softly, reassuringly along the line of her jaw, the other gripping firmly at her hip, guiding her. “Always,” he whispers, lowering her onto him.

Her mom notices her newest mark the next morning. They are in the hospital and she is helping her into the itchy hospital gown when Tessa hears her gasp. Her hand touches the spot just over Tessa hip, curving around to her back. Tessa herself had seen it this morning, in the dim light of sunrise reflecting in her mirror through her bathroom window. She knows what it looks like. It’s the imprint of his hand, where it had gripped at her hip as he guided her down, where it had squeezed tightly the moment they were finally joined. It’s a fiery red now, like a burn but she knows it will fade over time. Just like the others. His thumb print on her wrist, his lips on her neck, the plush pink stain of her lips.

“Tess…” her mom starts, voice twisted and laced with concern.

“It’s not…” she starts, wanting to finish with _what it looks like_ , but what is it that it would look like to someone else? “He, he didn’t hurt me mom. He would never,” is what she says instead, voice thick like tar, the words sticking to the roof of her mouth.

“Scott?” her mother asks, and it’s more of a confirmation, than an actual question.

She nods, turning towards her mom, arms coming to wrap around herself protectively. She swallows around the lump in her throat, breathing in deeply and holding it. “ _Scott,”_ she releases on the exhale, her head nodding again. Her mouth wraps around his name, the same way it had him. His name is heavy on her tongue, the weight of it feels solid, tangible, it pulls her down, makes her feel grounded, complete. Because of course it’s Scott, when has it ever not been him.

“Oh Tess,” her mother sighs softly, as she caresses Tessa cheek, brushing a strand of hair off her face. She sounds resigned, maybe a little regretful. “I wish you’d waited.”

Tessa blinks at her, confused. She’s nineteen, she’s an adult, even if some days she doesn’t feel like it. Even if she’d wished to still be a child when the pain in her legs built to intolerable levels, when the doctor had said surgery. She wished she’d still been little, so the decision of whether or not to cut into her shins hadn’t been hers to bear. But as it is, she is an adult and has been making decisions for herself, for her career--her and Scott’s--for years. Her choice to be with Scott, to let him have that last part of her, was her own and she can’t find it in herself to regret it. _Anyways_ , she thinks, _how could I have waited any longer?_ How could she have waited, when she’s been being pulled into his gravity, giving away parts of herself to him, since she was seven years old? She couldn’t resist the pull of him anymore than she could ignore the pain prickling and burning through her legs with each and every step she took.  

“I couldn’t,” she says honestly, the rawness in her confession audible in her voice, her throat scratchy with emotion. She almost says, _I don’t know how to not want him._

“Baby,” her mom says, pulling her into a tight embrace. “I know. I know. I’m so sorry.” She is stroking Tessa’s hair, her lips pressed to the top of her head as she repeats that she _knows_ and she is _sorry._ For what Tessa isn’t sure.

They pull away from each other, both with glassy, red rimmed eyes, her mom kisses her once on the forehead, before reaching for her wrist. She runs a finger over the mark there, a light pink colour now the size and shape of a child’s thumb print. “This was the first one?” She asks, though Tessa is certain she already knows the answer. Tessa nods, biting the inside of her lip. “You two were so little then,” her mom says, wistfully.

“Mom,” she takes a deep steadying breath. “Why?”

She’s never before questioned this connection she has with the boy who took her hand, silently, at seven years old and didn’t want to give it back. In the eleven years they’ve been partners she never thought to unpack the reasons why she always feels the way she does with him. Especially when she has her hand fitted snugly in his, fingers intertwined like vines growing around each other. This is the first time she’s really, truly stopped to wonder _why?_ Why has he left these marks on her skin, like little brands burned into her flesh with every bit of herself she’s shared with him? She isn’t entirely sure she wants to know the answer.

Her mom sighs, sitting back on the hospital bed her eyes scanning the little room, the long tube of a fluorescent light flickering painfully above them. “You are so special, Tess,” she starts, taking both Tessa’s hands in her own. “So, so special, sweetheart. The universe has big plans for you. You are so driven, so determined,” she pauses to give her hands a gentle squeeze. “But sometimes, some people they have souls, spirits, that are just too big, too restless to be contained just within them, sometimes they need to be shared. They find people to share parts of themselves with and in turn, they leave you with a little mark, a part of them to carry with you.”

Tessa raises her eyebrows at her mom, her forehead creasing as she tries to take in what her mother is telling her. She doesn’t say anything though, stays quiet until her mom continues.

“You need something, or I guess really someone, to hold on to, I guess, to hold a part of you. To share part of that big soul with.”

“So I need to be tied down?” She asks, a bit of anger rising in her usually calm, quiet, voice.

Her mother shakes her head vigorously. “No, no, it’s not like that. Not entirely. Look, sweetie, no one knows exactly why this happens...it’s not necessarily a bad thing, honey. You,” she sucks in a breath through her teeth, like the next thing she has to say, she really, really doesn’t want to say, “you love him, don’t you?”

Tessa nods, because of course she does. She’s just never admitted it out loud before. _I love Scott Moir,_ she smiles tightly as she thinks it, not sure she’s ready for that, but the feeling fills her all the same.

“We knew it’d be him, since you were little, the two of you just fit. You’ve always been so drawn to him, even then. I was just hoping you’d have some more time to just be you.”

“I’m still me, mom,” Tessa says with more conviction than she thinks she feels. She is, though, she knows that she is the same Tessa that she was yesterday. There is just another piece of herself, she thinks, that is now held by Scott. For safekeeping. He’s always been good at keeping her safe, it’s his job.

“I know,” her mom nods her head and forces a smile.

“How did you know?” she thinks to ask, not meaning how does her mother know she is still the same girl she was the day before, but how did she know about this indefinable bond she shares with Scott, the tying of her body and soul to his, the marks he’s left on her. She hopes her mom understands everything she is placing into a simple question.

“Your grandmother knew, right from when you were a little baby. You’re just like her.”

“Nonee? Her and grandpa were like this?” Tessa asks.

Her mother nods, “It was so difficult for her, after he was gone. She was missing a part of herself, a part that would never come back. But then you came and I think you helped fill some of that space for her, a little bit of that big spirit of yours went to your Nonee. Your first mark, is,” her mom runs a hand through her long hair and over her scalp, “right here. A kiss from her on the top of your little head, you can’t see it now...but you didn’t have so much hair then, when you were small, and it wasn’t as dark. And she had a mark from you too, around her finger, where you’d wrapped your tiny little fist around it.”

Tessa understands now, perhaps, why she’s always shared such a strong bond with her grandmother. Why, she has always had a bit of an old soul.

Tessa runs her own hand through her hair, pausing at the top of her head and it’s almost like she can feel her grandmother here with them, it hasn’t been long since she’s been gone and it hurts sometimes how much she misses her. She thinks then, of how much more of herself Scott has claimed and thinks of the pain she’d endure missing him and together it is just too much and she starts to cry.

“It’s not fair,” she says, voice wet with tears as she leans into her mother’s shoulder, fat tears wetting the soft fabric of her sweater. “It’s not fair.”

“It’ll be okay sweetheart,” she can hear her mom swallow down her own concerns, “I promise it will be okay.”

Tessa shakes her head, her hair catching and dragging across her mother’s sweater, her face leaving behind a trail of snot and tears. “If...with Nonee...she was like this too...and we shared parts with each other...does that mean...is Scott...does he feel the same too?” This has always been her biggest fear, even with just accepting that parts of her were so intertwined and shared with him, to the point she wasn’t sure they still belonged to her, she was always afraid that he didn’t feel the same. That the pull she feels towards him is one sided, that he doesn’t need her as much as she needs him--he certainly doesn’t for skating, she thinks, she only brings him down, especially now with her damaged legs. But maybe she’s marked him like he has her, maybe they share this magnetic force pulling them into each other. Maybe he feels more whole when he’s with her.

_Maybe he loves me, too._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. when you think of love, do you think of pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the bottom of my heart I want to thank only_because3 for all her help on this chapter, I don’t know how I would have finished without her. 
> 
> I am so grateful for all of the wonderful comments I have received so far for my take on something kind of like soulmates. I would like to extend fair warning that this chapter might be a bit on the angsty side but hopefully the end will be worth it.

**_When you think of love, do you think of pain?_ **

_ Nineteen  _

After surgery she’s left with two more marks. Angry red scars that form where she was cut open; a last ditch effort to relieve some of the pressure on her muscles. These ones are sharp vertical lines carved into her flesh by the smooth edge of a scalpel. A visual representation of what had once been an invisible injury. They are precise and unnatural, so unlike the ones that seemed to seep from under her skin at his touch, like a blush. Yet, these marks belong to him too, in an entirely different way. They belong to their career and all she has poured into it. They represent her fear of letting him down. They remind her of everything that can go wrong, all that she has to lose—who she could possibly lose.

Scott isn’t there when she wakes up from surgery, blinking out of the anesthesia induced haze. She knows he’s not even before the picture of her room becomes clear. She can feel the absence of him as acutely as his presence. The lack of warmth, the uncomfortable tingling in her fingers, like her soul is reaching out to find his, and now a deep seated ache that consumes her whole being letting her know that he isn’t near. It’s like the ache between her legs when she’d awoke early this morning, except instead of a satisfying reminder of what they’d shared, this dull throbbing travels the expanse of her body and reminds her what she is missing. She’s alone. 

Except she isn’t really alone. Her mother and her sister are by her side, quietly waiting for her to re-enter the world of the waking. And she knows her father and her brothers are somewhere just outside, waiting on the word that all is well. She pictures the three of them sitting in a row in the waiting room. Except she knows that they won’t be, her dad will be standing, checking his phone far too often, Casey will probably be leaning back on one of the chairs his feet up on the wobbly table, Kevin will be sitting in the corner hunched over leaning his elbows on his thighs. They will all be wearing the exact same expression, a worry line creasing their foreheads, brows low and pulled tight trying to hide their concern as they hang back to give her the space they know she will need. If Scott were out there waiting with them she knows he would be pacing, bouncing restlessly on his heels, his jaw tight as he’d bite at his nails. But he’s not there. He’s not in here with her, where she needs him and he isn’t out there waiting either. She doesn’t know where he is and it hurts. 

They hadn’t discussed him being here, when she woke up. They tried not to talk about her surgery and their shared fears that it wouldn’t be enough at all. But she thought after last night, after she had bared herself and shared everything she had left with him that he’d understand, that he would be here. If he felt the same, he would be here. If he were as tied to her as she was too him he’d feel the pull, the bone weary ache and he’d be here. He’s not. She can feel a tiny crack begin to form right through the midline of her heart. She feels splintered and hollow and maybe it is just an overreaction made worse by the muddling in her brain caused by anesthetic and pain killers. 

_ It’s not.  _ She knows that now. Parts of herself will always belong with him, she will never get them back, even if he never feels the same way. 

She’s hardly even awake but she can already feel tears stinging her eyes before gathering in the corners and dripping down the side of her face, collecting in her hair. Without her needing to utter a single word her mother and her sister are at her side. Jordan takes her hand, the one without the protruding IV and her mother carefully slips herself into the bed next to Tessa, using her thumb to wipe away her tears. 

“It’s okay sweetheart,” she says, her voice soft as she presses a kiss into her hair. “You’re okay.” 

She feels Jordan’s hand close tightly around her own and the pressure helps ease the tingling, the emptiness she feels without him here. She wonders what, if anything her mother told her sister while she was out. Because both of these women, two of her greatest role models, are looking at her with the same sad eyes, it’s not quite pitying but something like it. Everyone in this room knows her tears are for more than the fact that she just had surgery and it only serves to make her cry harder. 

“You look like shit,” Jordan says, a little smile playing at her lips. 

“At least I have an excuse,” she tosses back, her voice hoarse, barely more than a rasp. Her sister smiles wider and squeezes her hand again and she finds herself chuckling, even though it hurts.

“You’ll get through this,” Jordan says, looking quickly to their mom, who nods in encouragement. “No matter what, you’ll be okay, and we will be here for you.”

He doesn’t come to the hospital and she doesn’t hear from him, so the next day she makes the ill advised choice to text him while still a bit cloudy on painkillers. Her brain feels light and fluffy, while her body feels weighed down, the drugs not enough to erase the aching she feels. The lines of all her thoughts are blurred, smudged like charcoal, so she can’t think clearly that her words might be a mistake. 

She types,  _ I lived. I wished you were here, but you weren’t.  _

He responds quickly with,  _ I’m sorry.  _ Nothing more. She gave her whole body to him, bits and pieces of her soul, there are parts of her that will always be his and he wasn’t there for her when she needed him to be. When she was scared and empty. He’d left her before the sun even rose with a quick kiss to the side of her head then he’d snuck back out they same way he’d come in. His line of apology just makes the ache worse. Before he can explain, before he can tell her that sleeping with her was a mistake, that they shouldn’t have, that he cares for her but...before he can ask how she feels, before she becomes afraid of the big, scary what happens next she texts back with,  _ I will let you know when I can skate again, I guess.  _

_ Ok.  _

And that’s it. The final line. The end of the first part of their story.

A few times, when she is curled under her thick comforter, in the bedroom that has been stunted at the likes of a thirteen-year-old—the age she was when she left it the first time—tears gathering in the corners of her eyes but stubbornly refusing to fall, she thinks of calling him, of telling him she can’t do it. Won’t do it. When the pain won’t fade, when she feels like a fawn trying to walk on shaky, gangly legs, when getting up to get a snack from the kitchen is too much, she feels like telling him she is done. It didn’t work, it wasn’t worth it. But as soon as the words can even take shape as thoughts inside her head, before she can breathe them out, before the bubble of doubt can even form she pops it. 

She feels so cold and empty without him, without the ice. There is a tugging somewhere deep inside her pulling her towards him and the more she pulls against it the more it hurts. She needs to be close to him and being with him means being on the ice. Scott and skating to her are so intrinsically linked, skating means Scott and Scott means skating. The pull is so much stronger than the pain, so does her physio and grits her teeth against the sting that just won’t leave her legs. 

In between the hours a day of physical therapy that leave her feeling like her body has been hollowed out and filled back up with stones and sand she has plenty of time to read. She gets book upon book from the library trying to learn about these marks she has, the connection she feels to him, the reasons she can’t just quit. She pores over books on  _ soul sharing  _ learning everything she can. She runs her fingers over the pages, tracing black ink as if she could caress the words, if she could feel them they could offer her some kind of comfort. 

She learns that even in this, in this thing that she shares with such a small portion of people she is different. Usually people don’t share nearly as much of themselves as she has, and almost never all to the same person. Usually, it’s little bits given to very special people ones who will hold a certain part of your soul, of your history. You leave a little bit of yourself with them and an impression of them, something they shared with you or taught you stays with you, living on in the physical mark they leave. Usually, there are no more than two, maybe three marks all belonging to different people of significance. She can’t find anything about someone like who, who has so many marks all from the same person. All that history and significance wrapped up in just him. Him and her Nonee. But that little bit of her is gone, everything that’s left is with him. 

It’s nearly two months before she tells him she can go back on the ice again. Even though the pressure in her legs is still too much, the throbbing is dulled by the pain of missing the part of herself that is with him. She has to skate. 

 

_ Twenty _

On the ice is where she gets to have him. On the ice is where she can feel warm and whole. Where he takes her hand firmly in his, where their lips brush, breath soft against each other’s skin, where his face finds the crook of her neck in a final pose, where his grip is firm on her hip in a lift. On ice is where he loves her. And that has to be enough. It is enough. She can’t ask him for more than that.

She shakes herself out, first from her shoulders down to her fingers trying to drive away the overwhelming desire to grab for his hand, then each leg, one after the other. She bounces up and down on her skates and she can already feel the tightness in her shins, wrapping around towards her calves. The prickle of numbness that radiates towards her toes and she never quite understands how to explain this sensation—to be in so much pain, like each nerve that reaches into her lower legs is on fire, but also to have a lack of any sensation at all. How can you hurt and be numb all at the same time? She breathes in through her nose, counting  _ in two, three, four  _ as she does so. And the exhale through her mouth, a loud and exaggerated  _ out two, three, four.  _

Everything and everyone is buzzing around her. There is a constant humming in her ear that she just can’t quite block out. The stands are full, every seat in the arena filled with a warm body. There is yelling and cheering and she thinks she can make out cowbells, like this is some sort of race to a finish line, not figure skating. Like this is not the delicate balance of artistry and athleticism she fell in love with when she was just barely big enough to peak out over the boards. 

From where she stands waiting, a Canada zip jacket—his because today she needs that extra warmth, she needs to be able to breathe in and inhale him, to feel like part of him is with her always, even when he’s not by her side or else she may just fall apart—draped over her shoulders, the glittering white of her dress poking out from underneath it, all she can see is movement. Athletes and coaches and volunteers and press circle around her like vultures, waiting for the first sign of weakness. So she plasters on the smile she’s gotten so used to wearing, as essential to her daily getting ready routine as mascara and lipgloss. It’s the one that says  _ I’m fine _ , even though she’s anything but. She smiles her smile, even as bile rises in her throat, and she waits for Scott to find her, to stand next to her, to hold her and make her feel somewhere close to okay. 

_ It’s not fair.  _

It’s not fair how much she needs him. She doesn’t want to need him, doesn’t want to want him. She doesn’t want to be so tied up in him that she has all these parts of her that she’s given him, as if she belongs to him. Especially, since he doesn’t belong to her. It’s not fair to him either, to be responsible for these parts of her without even knowing it, to be the only one who can make her feel happy and complete. It’s not fair. She could tell him, she knows, about the marks. She could tell him she loves him, will always love him (as if she had a choice). And she thinks, she really does, that he cares enough for her, feels enough loyalty to her that he’d be there for her in whatever way she asked him to be. But that isn’t fair. Not to herself or to him. What if there is someone out there for him? Someone else who will own a part of his soul like he has hers, who will make him feel warm and whole and loved. It breaks her heart, breaks every piece of herself she has left, to think about it but she has to let him find that, if he can. It’s only fair. 

So, she loves him on the ice. Let’s him love her back as they glide across the frozen expanse of the rink, their skates cutting mirrored images into the marred surface. She lets him hold her up when her legs just won’t. And in return she pushes through the biting pain for him as they skate through the entirety of their dance. One they had only trained in fragments—like little pieces of a puzzle that will hopefully add up to make a picture—because it was all that she can take. They hardly talked for months, as the cobbled together movements bit by painstaking bit.  _ But,  _ she thinks,  _ when have we ever needed words?  _ They made it here and he’s holding her up as she begins to feel herself fading, he’s telling her with and without words that they can make it, together. She is gliding beside him, spinning around him, flying with him. 

They win the Olympics. They win the Olympics and she feels like she’s floating, just like she floated through their programs, barely aware that it was in fact her own body going through the practiced motions. Scott’s hand, gripping so tightly onto hers that her fingers turn purple, is the only thing holding her down. They win the Olympics and for just a little while everything feels worth it. She has a gold medal around her neck and he has one to match and she is clutching on to his hand just as tightly as he is to hers and it’s almost as if nothing hurts. 

Maybe it was all just to get to here, to this moment. She gave him her hand to hold and she found warmth. She found a partner who she could could talk to without _ talking _ . She gave him her kiss and it made her brave, like together they could do anything. She let him have the crook of her neck and with his lips pressed against the thrumming of her pulse their heart beats synced, now they find calm together. Finally, she gave him her body and they became connected, he knows her, can anticipate how her body feels, how she will move, knows instinctively when she is in pain or starting to fade, just as she can anticipate the movement of his blade, the depth of his edge, exactly where his hands will fall on her. 

All these parts of herself that she gave him were just to get them to here, to be able to skate fluidly, like one body, together, always. It was all just for this. And maybe that’s okay. She gave herself to him so they could get to the Olympics. And she gave her legs to their career so they could win. 

It has to be worth it. It feels like it is, when she looks at him and he is beaming, his smile a beacon in the dark, the flashing light of a lighthouse and she’s been a ship lost at sea. His smile is salvation. She finds herself grinning right back at him as they cling too tightly to each other. Happiness, a flood of pure warm happiness spills out of him and into her and it is worth it. Worth it to know that they got here together, that she got to be a part of making that smile. That the giddiness radiating off of him is because of her, because of them and what they did together. And she feels it too, the joy of winning, the triumph of knowing they did everything they could and it paid off. The feeling is addictive. It’s euphoric and somehow it keeps her body working, the happiness holds her upright and is enough for her brain to forget just for a moment what pain is. 

There is no pain when she is with him and they are this content. She looks at him again and he is smiling at her and it reminds her so much of the boy who first took her hand, who laughed that body shaking laugh and she starts to cry at the memory of those two innocent little kids. And then she starts to laugh. 

She is laughing and crying and he wipes the tears off her cheeks with his thumb and kisses her temple and he is still beaming when he says, “Thank you. Thank you so much.” 

And it’s as good as  _ I love you.  _

And for right now, everything, everything she’s lost and all that she’s gained has been worth it. 

He sweeps her up in his arms and it’s the closest to whole that she’s felt since the night before her surgery when she gave herself to him. She nuzzles her face into the white fabric draped loose across his chest and whispers against the beating of his heart, “Thank you for holding me up. I love you, so much.”   
  


_ Twenty-one  _

She gets herself two more marks on her legs. Another set of sharp, angry red lines. Another last ditch effort to save their career, to save her legs. Doctors cut through her flesh, open up the fascia, hopeful that this time it will work. This time her overworked muscles will have the room that they need to breathe, to expand, to work how she needs them to. They try a different compartment, hoping that this will be the fix, because the only other option is to stop. No more skating. 

She could quit, she knows that. They won gold at the Olympics and road in horse drawn carriages around his hometown to show them off. They became  _ Canada’s Sweethearts,  _ a term that only serves to crack her own heart just a little bit more every time she hears it, winning over an entire nation. They did it. They made it. That was supposed to be it. Everything was supposed to be worth it for that single, indescribable moment. But how could she let that be the end? 

How could she take away his chance to feel that again? She thinks of Scott’s smile, the blinding light of it that felt like it was guiding her where she was meant to be--next to him. And the top of the Olympic podium is where he is meant to be. She could see him already itching to talk about  _ next time _ barely hours after they had won. His whole body coiled tight with the excitement he was trying to hold in. He says he won’t skate without her. Has whispered it softly, urgently into her hair while she cried on his shoulder. Has yelled it at her during the more difficult moments when she’s told him he is better off without her.  _ It’s you or it’s no one,  _ he says. He says it over and over and over in so many different ways, and she might actually have to believe him—if only he were marked by her like she is by him, then she’d know for certain he’d never leave, that he couldn’t bare it. He deserves to win again and if he won’t do it with someone else, it has to be her.

She wants it too. Wants to feel the thrill of winning something so big just one more time, can feel the desire for it course hot through her veins. It is almost as hot and electrifying as being with him. It’s a high she wants to chase again and again. So, it’s surgery, and it isn’t really a question at all. 

This time is different though. He is there the moment she wakes. Before she can even open her eyes she can sense him, she can smell him, she can feel his hand where is rests heavily, comfortingly over hers. He is rubbing gentle circles over the top of her hand with his thumb and the soothing motion of it, the care she can feel radiating from the pad of his thumb through the thin skin on her hand warms her all the way through to her soul. A slow, tired smile creeps over her lips. First the right hand corner quirks up ever so slightly, before the rest of her lips follow. 

Her eyelids are too heavy to open right now, she tries but they only manage to lift a fraction before they are fluttering closed again. But she knows he is smiling back at her, she can feel it in the way his entire presence in the room relaxes. He shifts next to her and she can feel the press of his lips against her forehead. 

“Hey there, pretty girl,” he says, voice soft and close, meant just for her. She keeps the sound, the words wrapped tightly around herself, feeling the warmth of them flood through her. “How are you feeling?” 

She hums while she tries to take a mental catalogue of how she feels. She still feels fuzzy, doesn’t really feel much of anything. Feels like her legs might not even be attached anymore. Everything is just soft and round edges. The only thing she can grasp on to is contentment. He’s here. 

“Happy,” she says, slow and sleepy, the word curving up into another smile. 

She can hear him chuckle, low and breathy. “That’s good,” he smooths her hair behind her ear, “happy is good.” 

She hums again and nuzzles into his hand where it still rests on the side of her head, fingers caressing the tip of her ear. “Very good,” she mumbles.

“You should get some more rest, birdie.” 

She does but just before she drifts off again, she thinks that this is perfect and maybe it doesn’t matter if he is as tied to her as she is to him. Not if he’s choosing to be here this time.   
  


_ Twenty-three  _

Every mark he’s left on her prickles, near burning as he kisses a line up her neck, his mouth trailing underneath her jaw. She can feel herself melt underneath the heat of his lips. His hands are on her waist, tugging her roughly towards him and her steely resolve is molten, near liquid and malleable from the fire burning off him. Her bare toes curl into the short, corse hotel room carpet as she rises up on the balls of her feet to angle herself better against him. 

She can hear a growl growing from low in his throat. “Fuck, Tess you’re so beautiful. I want you, so bad.” 

She doesn’t say anything back, just leans in and kisses him, hard on the lips, nipping at his bottom lip with her teeth. She lets the words that would have rolled off her own tongue, somewhere between a beg and a prayer, drip onto his.  _ I want you, I need you.  _

She lets his body guide hers toward the bed, just like he leads her on the ice. She follows him like a good partner should, even though she knows they are stumbling perilously into a fire neither of them knows how to extinguish. His lips are at her ear, breathing out sounds that make up words, that might string together into how much he wants her body, wants her body around him, wants his body inside of hers and her own breath catches and her whole body near trembles with desire. She should push him away, she should tell him,  _ this is a bad idea and someone is going to get hurt. I’m going to hurt. I have nothing left to give you.  _ But she doesn’t.

She doesn’t know how to say no to him. Never has. She’s tries to resist the pull of him, tries hard to keep some bits of her to herself.  _ He can’t have it all _ , she thinks. But when he tugs on the threads that connect her to him she can’t ever resist. It’s like the parts of her soul that remain with her want desperately to reconnect with those parts that he holds. 

This isn’t the first time this has happened but she still finds her eyes carefully cataloguing every inch of exposed skin once she’s helped him shuck off his shirt, tossing it aside without thought. She runs her fingers over her favourite parts of him, her eyes following closely, hoping to find any sign of a mark she may have left on him. The imprint of her lips over his heart, a finger print along the back of his neck, the shape of her palm over the expanse if his upper arm. His skin is always perfect, unmarred, no sign she has claimed any part of him like he has her. She wonders if she’d know if she had. If he shared a part of himself with her the ways that she has with him would she feel it? Does he feel the parts of her that are with him? He has to know, in some way. He has seen her bare enough times now to have seen every mark he’s left on her. 

The one on her hip is so glaringly left by him, the impression of his hand, darker where the tips of his fingers had dug into her flesh. It has faded over time, like the temporary marks left on her bare skin when it is chilled by the air of the rink and he has to grip her tightly in a hold or a lift. He has to know it’s from him, the exact match to his palm print, the exact spot that he always grips to guide her where he wants her, where she wants to be. He has to know why it’s there. She isn’t sure if him knowing makes it better or worse. 

She’s known for years now that he doesn’t belong to her, not like that, not like she does to him. She has chipped off pieces of her soul and handed them to him, because it was too big just for her, so her mother told her. She’s given him so much. Far more than is normal, even for someone like her. She knows from the books she used to take out from the library— her cheeks pinking up, tucking her face into her scarf as the librarian looked from her to the book title trying, probably, to find a mark on her—that she has more marks than is typical. But since then she’s also learned that usually the marks are no more than the size of a penny, maybe a quarter. The bigger the mark, the bigger the part of you that was shared. She has read and read and read and never has she seen a full hand print, like the one he left, possessive and permanent on her hip. She help can’t feel like even if it wasn’t his intent he has claimed her. Ruined her for anyone else. 

Sometimes people have larger marks when equal parts of their souls are shared, together. It’s the closest to the idea of soul mates she’s seen. But he has no marks. He is the keeper of half of herself but she has never marked him. She wonders sometimes if parts of her soul will just keep cracking, chipping off, splintering and drifting away from her until she has nothing left at all. Until her big, big soul is nothing but a little shard of ice. All she want is a little part of him, just a spark of his fire, to thaw her out and to fill her back up. To have just one mark on him so that she knows that she is just as important to him as he is to her. 

She settles for marking him with her lips, with teeth, with her nails. So that at least for a few days everyone will know who he belonged to tonight. She finds the beating of his pulse, hard and fast under the cage of his ribs and sucks her mark into the soft skin stretched tight over the muscle of his left pectoral. Her hands snake around his sides and she scratches her nails up his back, leaving a trail of red in their wake. His grip on her hips tightens as he holds her flush against him, like if she has him he has to claim her all over again. It’s a dangerous game of possession they’ve been playing for months now. She blames the blemishes he’s left on her skin and the ones she hasn’t left on his. She blames  _ Carmen. _

The backs of her knees hit the bed and she lets her lips linger in a kiss above his heart, soothing the near purple mark she’s made, before letting herself fall to her back on the bed. She’s resting on her elbows watching him, her eyes drifting from the temporary marks she’s left to his face. She watches how his eyes grow wide and dark as he as tugs off her leggings, letting his fingers ghost along her skin, goosebumps form in the wake of his hand, like her flesh is rising to meet his, every cell in her body desperate to be touched by him. She watches as he sucks in a sharp breath, the muscles of his chest contracting as his nostrils flare when she shifts herself up higher on the bed, letting her legs fold open like the wings of a butterfly. She watches as his muscles tense and his gaze sharpens, almost predatory in nature as he crawls up onto the bed, slowing slinking his way up her body. 

His lips slot perfectly over hers, coaxing her to open her mouth in a silent moan, arching herself up into him. She feels warm all over, bordering on hot, as she wraps her legs around his hips pulling him in. He rests in the cradle of her pelvis and it’s like she’s found a her missing puzzle piece. Those parts of herself that he holds with him are slotting back into place, or will, so very, very soon. It makes her forget all the reasons she tries to resist the pull of him, the fear of letting him have anymore, the anger she has at feeling like she belongs to him. Right now she doesn’t want to be anything but his.  _ Entirely, unequivocally his.  _

She hugs him against her with her legs, needing him closer, closer, closer still. Her thighs are strong, flexed around his hips and he groans into her mouth, she can feel the vibrations of it as she swallows, traveling the entirety of her being. He grinds himself into her, she can feel him strain through his jeans and he pushes himself down against her, desperate for what she’s offering, for what he longs to take. 

“Tell me what you need,” she whispers, the softness of her voice contradicting the tension in her legs holding him firm against her. She delicately runs a finger through his hair. 

_ “Tessss—”  _ he draws out, the s’s hissing like wind blowing out from inside his lungs. He says it like it’s the only word he knows, like it’s the answer to every question. Right now it is. It’s her name, it is  _ her.  _ She is what he needs. She can see it in his eyes when he looks up at her, the same soul consuming need she feels for him reflected back at her. Like he won’t live unless he has this. Maybe the parts of her soul inside him want just as badly to be reunited with their counterparts, the broken bits she still has left. Or maybe he just needs her body, her grounding force. 

It feels a little like winning. It feels powerful. She feels strong, having him need her too.    
  


_ Twenty-four  _

They are alone. Together but alone. At least that’s how they feel as they touch down in Russia, fingers intertwined, palms pressed together as the plane bumps down roughly on the tarmac, for their second Olympics. They feel unsupported, so they lean on each other, taking comfort in the other’s presence. He is constantly touching her, laying an arm across her shoulders, letting his lips linger against hers in practice, tugging her into his embrace, sitting next to her shoulder to shoulder, standing with his hand splayed out across her hip. He needs these extra bits of contact, their easy physical affection. He needs to touch her, as much as she needs his touch. She can feel him grounding himself through her, in a way that only she can offer him. 

Standing behind her, waiting—waiting for their fate, because it feels more and more that their actual ability has little to do with the ultimate outcome this time— wraps his arms around her middle and tucks his chin onto her shoulder, his breath puffing out warm across her bare skin. She relaxes into him more than she should allow herself but she feels pliable under the weight of him as he leans against her. 

He turns his face in towards her neck and speaks soft and low, letting the words brush across her flesh. “You’re beautiful,” he starts, and she can feel his smile pressed against that special spot that he claimed oh so long ago. “There is no one else I’d rather be with.” 

He squeezes tightly around her waist before kissing the top of her neck, right below where her last vertebrae disappears under the curtain of her hair. She lets herself fall into him, let’s him hold her however he needs and tries hard not to analyze his words. Because this feels different, feels like he’s taking comfort in more than just her body, this feels like more. It’s too much, so she closes her eyes. She allows herself only to focus on the feeling of being surrounded by his warmth. Allows herself to be drawn in to a quiet place of their own creation, a bubble, with him when everything else around them is chaos. She puts her own arms overtop of his, where they still clutch around her protectively, lacing her fingers in between his. 

She had forgotten how much she needed this too, how cold and empty she had felt when they drifted apart over the last year, like she was unanchored, adrift at sea without a liferaft and no sign of land. He is the rocky sea shore, he is salvation. She wants to melt into his arms everytime they wrap around her and never let go. She wants to pull him in so close, so tight that she can feel his heart beating in her own chest. So close that his heart becomes hers.

Having this closeness again is wonderful and horrible all at once. She had nearly forgotten how much she needs him, how she doesn’t feel whole without him, how her soul aches to be reconnected with its other half. She had become numb to it, learned to live with the hollow chill. But now she remembers warmth, comfort and something close to real honest to god love. She never wants to live without again. She wants to hold on so tightly that they truly become one. She wants to hold on and never let him leave her. But that isn’t her choice. 

When they are done after this, where will they go? Once he doesn’t need her anymore, where will that leave her? Empty and alone. Because as much as he needs her now, she can’t help but think that he won’t need her always. Whether it is tomorrow or a year from now, he isn’t tied to her in that way. She hasn’t marked him, they don’t work that way. Once this journey is over, once they’ve settled into some semblance of a regular life, he  _ will  _ stop needing her. She’ll still need him though, always, and she hates him for that—just a little bit. 

They’ve moved their waiting next to the ice now and she’s bouncing. Restless. She hates waiting. Waiting lets the anxiety in and it creeps up from her toes, making her legs shaky and restless, up, up, up, into her chest where it makes her pulse pick up and her breathing feel tight and laboured—her heart and lungs falling out of sync with each other. She shakes herself out before it can creep up higher, making her dizzy. But he’s still close, always within arms reach and he grabs her hand, stills it. 

He gives her hand a quick succession of squeezes.  _ We’ve got this,  _ the touches say,  _ we can do this, we have a chance, we can win, together. _

He spins her to face him and he is calm already, his eyes light—nearly green—under the bright overhead lights and alert but at ease. His smile is loose and genuine. It’s as if his near constant proximity to her has had a semi permanent affect. It’s as if he’s taken her steadiness, her ability to weather the storm, to level him out and kept it for himself. But he’s used all he needs and it’s time to give some back to her. 

He pulls her in towards him and holds her hand in his, the other smoothing down her soft pink dress, his palm running over the delicate beading, before picking up her other hand. She smiles back at him, though a little wearily, and he grins wide eyed and wide mouthed back at her. Then he strokes his thumbs over the tops of her hands quietly until her body stops humming and her smile stays, easily. 

“No matter what, we’re together,” he pauses for emphasis. “And no matter what, I love you.” He leans in just a bit closer, trapping his next words between them, these are for no one else. “No matter what, when this is over I’ll be here with you.”

They don’t win this time. They don’t win the Olympics. She has to pull herself up straighter, set her shoulders and push up against the weight of the silver as it comes crashing down on them. It hits her like a wave, dragging her under water and tossing her around until she can’t tell up from down. She keeps smiling because it’s still silver and that should be enough. It isn’t. She looks at him and can see the tightness around his smile and the slightest clench to the set of his jaw as the little piece of sun that had been shining in his eyes diminishes. Despite everything, despite all the times she told him that it wasn’t meant to be, that their silver was as good as carved in stone, he still had hope. 

After months of her urging him to see the truth that had folded itself around them, the dark web of a forced fate that had weaved itself into the fibres of their lives--she was just being fatalistic, he’d told her, and she wonders if he looked up the word beforehand to give himself some kind of authority--he’d finally believed her. After France, he’d finally seen what she saw but he still had this glimmering of hope and a stubborn desire to beat the system, to prove everyone wrong. It is something she’s always loved about him, his optimistic obstinance. Today she hates it. She hates that he had given her some of his hope, he’s taken so much from her, but this he’d given her; this ounce of hope, the idea that maybe they really could do it, together. They couldn’t. 

If she hadn’t had hope, silver wouldn’t hurt so much, she’d have found comfort in the inevitability of it all. But with each and every touch the past few days, every whispered affirmation, every brush of his lips against her skin, every bright sparkling smile he had given her hope. Hope that maybe if they beat fate, if they could win, if she could give him just one more gold medal, that she isn’t exactly sure...but if they could have won, that maybe, just maybe they could be whole together. She could let herself be pulled fully into his gravity, forever. But they lost and even if it isn’t today she lost him, too. She watches him skating around the ice with a Canadian flag poncho slung around his shoulders, laughing at the absurdity of it, always finding something light in the heaviest moments. She puts her hand over her heart, skates over to him and forces out her own laugh, watches him and fakes a laugh until the sound drowns out everything else.

He’s drunk when he gets to her room. Not as drunk as she knows he wants to be but buzzing all the same. Drunk enough for a glassy sheen to have formed to cover the dullness in his eyes. He breathes in deeply the moment he sees her like he hasn’t taken a proper breath since the last he was with her. He fills himself with air, puffing up like a balloon before absolutely deflating into her. She catches him, holds him up, holds him like he’s held her so many times before. 

“I’m sorry, T,” he says, voice breaking around the tears she knows are threatening to form. He had really thought they had a chance, he’d believed in himself, in them. It breaks her heart. She can feel how exhausted he is just from holding himself up, from saying over and over again that silver was okay until she almost believed him. She can feel the strain the pieces of her soul she’s unwittingly entrusted to him are under as they work to level him, but he needs all of her to do that properly. “I’m so sorry. I really thought it could be different.” 

She strokes his cheek with the back of her hand, feels the light scratching of his barely there stubble against her skin, and makes a shushing noise as she attempts to sooth him. Today he needs her and she will let him have whatever he needs. She’ll let him take everything she has tonight, before he realizes he doesn’t need her anymore, before she has to pretend she doesn’t need him. “It’s okay,” she whispers, holding him closer, hugging him against her chest so he can feel the beating of her heart. “It’s okay, I’m here.” 

“I’m here too,” he says softly back, the words getting caught and tangled up in her hair. “It’s over, T. It’s over but we’re both still here. I need you,” he pulls away from her just enough to look into her eyes. His are dark, shiny with both tears and the effects of alcohol, they look desperate, pleading. “I need you. I don’t know how to live without you, Tess.”

_ If only you knew,  _ she thinks.  _ If only you could understand how that really feels.  _ To feel whole, to feel like you truly exist, only in relation to someone else. He will never understand and it’s unfair.

“Scott,” is all she manages to push out through the heaviness in the air that surrounds them. 

“Tess,” he says, voice soft as ever, velvety and sweet like a smooth milk chocolate. “I lo—“ 

She pushes up on her toes, the bones in her feet, her metatarsals, popping and crackling on her way up. She kisses him, trapping his words in her mouth and swallowing them so he can’t have them back. She doesn’t want him to make any vows he cannot keep, so she saves them from those words, choking them down as she presses her lips against his. She kisses him with the full weight of their silver medals.

She knows he loves her. She does. She knows it like a law of the universe, knows it like she knows the sun will rise in the morning and set in the evening, it’s something she needs no proof for. She doesn’t believe the fates, or whatever is out there, would have allowed so much of her soul to be held indefinitely by a boy who doesn’t love her. No, of course it would go to someone who would keep all those parts of her safe, protected, and cherished. Just like he always does on ice. She’s never once feared that he’d drop her. 

Her lips mold over his and his lips meet the pressure of hers, working with her as if in a choreographed movement. Their bodies are so good at this, the move together so well. Here and on the ice everything feels so natural. All the pieces of them fit together, slotting into place, a perfect partnership, entirely balanced. But off the ice, outside of the confines of a dance, outside of this type of intense physical intimacy, in the real world they become imbalanced. The scale that measures their love and need leans heavily to one side. It isn’t his fault and she doesn’t blame him. She keeps giving all these parts of herself over to him and he keeps taking them, however unwittingly. Neither of them chose this, it is just how it is.

She can still taste the  _ I love you  _ on his tongue, mixing with cheap beer, probably Molson from Canada House. It’s not that she doesn’t want him to say it, she’s longed to hear him whisper it soft into her ear for years. For years she waited for him to say it, like he wants to now. She’d held on to so much hope that one day he’d profess his love to her and with that declaration he’d give her just one small part of his soul to hold, to cherish, to hold up. But she isn’t naive anymore. She knows that won’t happen. He isn’t like her. They aren’t soulmates. Her soul is connected to him, but his remains firmly where it belongs. She can’t let him give her hope, hope for the future. Hope that he needs forever, too. She doesn’t want anymore of his hope. If she let him say  _ I love you,  _ she would hope and it would cut her so much more deeply than the silver. 

She doesn’t need hope. She needs not to need him. She needs to fill herself back up with other things. Use her what’s left of her big, brilliant, destined for greatness soul and fill herself back up with accomplishment, with activities, with anything. 

One of her hands finds its way to his hair, while the other fumbles with the buttons of her own checkerboard flannel. After struggling with the first two buttons she moves her second hand down to help, making quick work of the shirt that is growing far too hot. By the time she is shrugging out of the shirt his hands are at the top of her jeans, working the button. They never break their kiss. 

“I need you too,” she says, “always.”

She makes love to him and he makes love to her. Usually, she hates the term, it feels too soft, like you’re just too afraid to say  _ fuck.  _ But this time it’s the only term that seems to fit. It’s exactly what they are doing; this is an act of desperate, needy, messy love. She thinks it’s okay for them to demonstrate love with their bodies. But there is too much pressure in the spoken words for the delicate balance of their relationship. It’s too much for her to hear him say it. Gentle and sweet and meaning everything. Meaning something slightly different, something more than they’ve ever used it for before. There is too much power and too much potential for destruction in one simple verbalization. 

She makes love to him like it will be the last time, because she’s determined it will be. It’s better this way. Like ripping off the bandaid, one swift tug, up and out. She needs to learn how not to need him before she’s too tangled up in him to pull away without ripping herself in to pieces in the process. 

_ One last time,  _ she thinks. 

  
  
  



	3. this mess was yours, now your mess is mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it’s me six months later...I finally found the inspiration to finish my take on soulmates. 
> 
> Thank you to all my lovelies who read and gave advice and helped me get this finished. 
> 
> I think this chapter took so long because there are a lot of emotions to sort through. I am sorry, I still hope you all enjoy.

 

_Twenty-four_

She watches him fall in love at the same time she watches him fall apart. She doesn’t know which hurts more, both the sharp point of a knife piercing through flesh, bisecting her heart, both her fault. He falls fast in love, diving head first into commitment. He pours all the energy that he used to save for skating—for her—into someone else. And maybe it’s not a sharp knife but rather a fist plunged into her chest, clutching and squeezing at her heart, threatening to rip it out. 

She can feel the painful pull of the parts of herself tethered to him, the further they pull away the more she feels, the hollower she is. She’s too far from such a large part of herself. But it’s what she wanted, for him and for herself. She should be happy for him. She’s the one who wouldn’t let him love her. 

She _should_ be happy for him. And god she tries to be, even when it rips her apart, when every mark he left on her body feels like it’s on fire. Like the flames are going to lick up around her and consume her body and soul. She tries to be happy for him. She tries to move on. She keeps herself busy with things that aren’t him. Because that’s exactly what she wanted. She wanted not to need him. To do well on her own before she became consumed by him. 

She finds man that isn’t him. One who hasn’t marked her body as his own. It makes her feel more hollow. She feels like she herself is a void. A shell of who she was, who she could be filled up with vast expanses of nothingness. She feels sick. Being with someone else after giving her entire self—as much as she thinks is possible to share with another without actually dying—to him makes her cave in on herself. It hurts her soul. 

She tries to replace the nothingness with school, with brand deals and appearances. It isn’t enough. She knows it never will be. And now she’s learned she can’t be with anyone else either. 

She does it for him though, so he can fall in love. So that he can be with someone right for him. So that he can feel somewhere even close to as whole as she’s had a chance to feel when she’d been with him—those times on the ice when nothing else mattered but the two of them, when he was as much hers as she was his. Even more whole those few times when they allowed themselves to be together. 

But then it’s midnight several months after the Olympics and she hasn’t seen him in three weeks and he’s knocking at her door. It’s an incessant kind of knocking and erratic. It’s a drunk knock, a desperate knock. She knows it’s him, knows he’s been out _having a good time_ before she even opens the door. She contemplates not opening the door, leaving him out there, drunk on her stoop. But it’s him and it’s her and she literally can’t stop herself so she lets him in. 

His eyes are bloodshot, his hair—getting a bit longer now—is sticking up at all angles, his jaw set hard and tight. His eyes widen in surprise when she swings open the door, like he wasn’t expecting her to open it. Which is ridiculous because it’s her and it’s him, so he knew she would. 

“I miss you,” he sputters out, practically tumbling into her foyer. “I miss you so much it hurts.” He places a hand over his heart, as if he’s demonstrating exactly where it hurts. As if he has any idea. “I feel like I can’t breathe, T.” 

She shakes her head and bites her lip so hard she can taste the bitterness of iron on her tongue. He isn’t supposed to do this to her. He’s meant to be happy. Sometimes, when he’s too close like this her soul feels like it is on fire, the rest of the time it’s like it might not even be there anymore, it becomes frozen, unmoving, separate from her while her body burns where he’s marked her. 

He can’t be here ripping more pieces out of her—there is nothing left for him to have. She’s locked what’s left of her heart up, hidden the key from him. He can’t have it. He’s meant to be happy and it isn’t fair. She didn’t rip her soul in half separating from him for him to do this. He loves someone else, someone better for him. He’s meant to be happy!

So, she tells him. He’s drunk enough she hopes he won’t remember, but he ought to know how unfair it is. She yells it. She raises her voice at him and she shouts her pain right to his face. “Scott, you have no fucking clue. You don’t. You could never possibly understand how much being away from you hurts me!” she pulls the sleeve of her sweatshirt up to reveal the first ever mark her left on her. It’s an angry red, more so than when it first appeared, like a brand seared into her skin. “You can’t understand how much I’m hurting.”

He looks at her and he looks both sad and scared in equal measure. “Let me make it hurt less, I don’t ever want you to hurt.”

She brings him inside and puts him to bed on her couch. He’s gone in the morning, leaving her a fresh pot of coffee and pancakes warming in her oven. 

_Twenty-five_

They’re touring. On ice with her hand in his she feels at home. She feels warm and alive, and she can pretend he loves her and needs her as much as she does him. She thinks, not for the first time, that maybe this is just how it is meant to be. They are soulmates on the ice. Tied together to be perfect at what they do. 

Except there isn’t a medal to win anymore. They don’t have to train together every day. They don’t need to know what is going on in the other’s life. And eventually, one of them will decide they don’t need this anymore either, the touring. It’s what she wanted. To be separate from him. To feel like she doesn’t belong to him, to let him live his life and find someone to love him, not need him. But she isn’t quite ready to let it go yet. 

She discovers that maybe he isn’t either when he hugs her, holds her close to him, swaying gently with his face in the crook of her neck and says, “I miss this. I miss you and the ice and all of it.” 

She believes him. It’s always different, she thinks, when they have skates on their feet. It isn’t the same as when he is saying things to her while she lies naked beside him, spent and sweaty, or when he’s drunk and pounding on her door. With their skates on it’s always real, it means something different. 

“Me too,” she says, running his back, swaying with him. “Me too.” 

“I miss competing, too,” he says. “Being out on the ice with you everyday...the hard work...everything...I miss it.” 

“Me too,” she says again. “I miss working toward the same thing.” _I miss being able to be close to you, to tap into the connection we share through my soul and not feeling overwhelmed by it,_ she thinks. 

He kisses her neck, right on the spot he claimed as his own, branded with the imprint of his lips eight years ago, and she lets herself melt into him, because they have their skates on…so it’s different, she only fights it off the ice. 

“Maybe we could come back,” he says. “Maybe we could win it all in 2018, you and me kiddo.” 

She can picture it, the top of the podium in Korea, his arms wrapped around her both beaming. She can feel it. Feel his warmth engulfing her and feeling and whole. 

It would mean two more years next to him. And she isn’t sure if that will make it harder or easier to completely let go. 

“Maybe,” she whispers. “Maybe we could do it.” 

  


_Twenty-six_

She doesn’t know why she does it. Later, she’ll blame gravity. It’s always pulling her into him. The more she pushes against it, the more it pulls her back in. The closer she gets to him the more she needs to be closer still.

He still has a girlfriend, a nice girlfriend. He loves his girlfriend. They are looking at houses. They’ve been talking about a life together. She is someone who is good for him, who he can love and who will love him back just the same. Not her, who needs him to breathe. Not her who can’t separate who she is from who he has shaped her into. Not her who is broken, hollow and empty with a fractured soul. 

But he’s standing in front of her, so close that when he draws in a deep, shuddering breath she can feel his chest expand against her own. She can smell the faint hint of alcohol on his breath as it puffs out over her cheek. But it’s light, just the sweetness of the wine he had with dinner, not the overwhelming scent of beer, seeping from his pores, that she’d gotten so used to. He tilts his head down so his forehead his resting against her own and it reminds her of being on the ice, those few glorious moments at the end of the program when it was still just him and her, when he could belong to her as much as she did him. Those few moments coming back to themselves, stripped of the characters they played, but still just them in their bubble, belonging to each other. 

“Tess,” he says, the words ghosting across her face. “Why won’t you let me in?”

“Scott,” she breathes his name. She hopes it conveys what she wants to say, that she can’t possibly give more of herself. Not to him or anyone. If she allows herself to be in love with him, fully then when it ends she will literally have nothing left.

“Tess,” he responds in kind. Her name is no more than a long exhale. “Let me…” she thinks he wants to say love you, but she’s already told him no. “Let me help you, you’re hurting. Even if you pretend you aren’t.”

She shakes her head. He needs to stop. He loves his girlfriend. They can’t keep crashing back into each other. She doesn’t know how to stop it and each time it just hurts more. She needs him to understand. She needs him to stop for both of them. 

“You love her,” she says, eventually. “You could have a really, really good life.” 

“She’s not you,” he says his voice raw, and then his lips are on hers and she is lost to anything else. It isn’t fair. He has to know what it does to her, when his lips press against hers, where he’s marked her. It’s been months and she finally feels like she can breathe, like she’s somewhere close to whole and she melts into him. It’s not fair. 

It’s slow and gentle and almost feels like too much. She’s overwhelmed by how complete she feels, like all the parts of herself are being slotted back into place. She gives herself over to the feeling, to him. Even though she knows it isn’t right. 

For the first time he seems to notice, to catalogue, all the marks he’s left on her skin. He touches each one delicately, as if it may hurt her. His thumb runs along the inside of her wrist. He circles her lips with the point of his index finger. His lips brush that spot between her neck and shoulder. Finally, he comes to the last one, the one that is so obviously from him--it looks just like the red hand prints left on her ice cold skin in her backless costumes, so much bareness exposed to the chill of the rink. He lines his hand up, the exact match and sucks in a sharp breath. 

All she can do is nod, an affirmative to his unanswered question. It’s been there since the first time they did this, a warm reminder on her skin of what she shared with him. She understands now why her mother said she wished she’d waited. Implying that them sharing this together was inevitable. Had she waited, then maybe she would have been ready for the finality of it all. She could have at least had a little time that was hers, she could have shared being physical with someone else without feeling empty inside. But then she remembers the truth of what she’d told her mom then, _how could I have waited?_ She’s never known how not to want him, to be closer to him than anyone else. 

Their coming together now is so much like it was that first time, desperate and a little bit messy. But even still it’s beautiful because it’s her and him. She feels wholly put together for the first time since that very first night. The closest she’s gotten to this feeling was when they skated their Olympic free dance in Vancouver, only that was overshadowed by the pain in her legs. She feels no pain tonight  as he lies her down on the bed and slowly pushes inside her. Not as he kisses her face, her neck, the top of her breasts almost reverently. She clutches at him, holding him as close to her as she can, as if she could press them together into one being. Like if she holds him close enough for long enough she could glue the pieces of her soul back together. 

When they are finished she keeps holding him and he holds her in return, stroking her back as she cries. 

“Tess,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.” 

“It’s too much,” is what she manages. It's always been too much.  “We can’t keep doing this...especially not if we come back...I can’t. It’s too hard...please. You have someone who can love you in the same way you love her. That’s not me. Please…” 

He pulls her into him, as tightly as he can muster and whispers into her hair. “But I love you.” 

She shakes her head and cries some more because it’s too much. It isn’t fair that he doesn’t understand. It isn’t fair that he doesn’t belong to her too, that he can’t feel what she feels.

_Twenty-six_

They do decide to return to competition. Neither of them feeling quite done. After all the months of hypotheticals, they’d looked at each other, smiled and said _yes,_ both feeling the itch to return. The deep seated need to feel the sense of fulfilment competition brought them. She still worries it will make everything that much harder, in the aftermath. But she’s told herself that she’ll be more careful this time. What they have will only he allowed on the ice. 

It’s been a few weeks since they slept together and she cried in his arms and blessedly he hasn’t said anything about it. He hasn’t pushed her to say anything back since he told her he loves her. He hasn’t gotten too close to her either, staying out of her orbit so that gravity doesn’t pull her into him again. He’s silently respecting her request.

He did break up with his girlfriend, though. He didn’t tell her and she found out about it from his mother. It was in a quiet moment when they were all together for a family meeting to discuss the comeback. She thought that maybe his girlfriend would be there to discuss the potential huge change in his life. She told Alma as much when they went into the kitchen to pour tea. 

“Oh sweetheart,” she’d said, clutching both Tessa’s hands in hers. “They broke up last week. Scotty was all worked up about it, said he wasn’t being fair to her, that it wasn’t fair to you either...I assumed it was with you guys going back to competing and all. He’s probably just waiting for the dust to settle before talking to you about it. You know how he is.” 

“I’m so sorry,” she’d said, looking down at her and Alma’s joined hands. “Maybe this isn’t such a good thing.” 

“I can’t say I’m not worried about what going back will mean for the two of you but I think in the end it will only be good things,” Alma said, shaking her head. Alma’s thumb brushed across the mark her son had left on Tessa’s wrist all those years ago and she looked back at Tessa with that same knowing smile--that half regretful one--that her mom always gives her when she sees any of her marks. Does Alma know?. “It just wasn’t meant to be and that’s okay and not your fault love.” 

She’d felt sick with guilt anyways. Still feels it. He was meant to be happy and she ruined it for him. She’s been stewing over it for two weeks now, wondering if the comeback is a good idea. They just made it official, but she thinks maybe she was being selfish just wanting a part of him again...even just a little part. But, she knows he needs it to. He’s been feeling lost, purposeless without it. He said as much. And she knows he misses the structure, the drive to reach a goal, he misses the win and she thinks she trusts herself to know him well enough that he misses being around her too. But she can’t let herself think that he misses her, all of her, without feeling awash with guilt.

They are in Montreal today meeting with their new team, scouting out apartments...and everything finally feels so real. Before it was just a dream, an idea floating around in their heads. But being here, signing contracts, going over action plans, workout guides, meeting everyone they will soon be working with is real, tangible.  

It makes her guilt feel more real, solid and tangible too. Like a rock in her gut hard and heavy, weighing her down. She thinks of a weird and twisty little game she and Jordan would play as children. She doesn’t remember the name or the story that went with it now, but she would lie down and close her eyes and Jordan would draw lines across her body, saying she was cutting her open, taking out everything inside before packing her back up full of rocks and sand--pushing and patting her tummy and limbs--and finally she’d sew her back up again. When she was instructed to get back up her body would feel heavy, imobile even though it was all in her head. This feels just like that. She’s filled up with sand and rocks as she trudges through the streets of Montreal next to him. There is no way she isn’t at fault and that knowledge weighs heavily on her soul. 

“Hey Virtch,” he nudges her as they get into the elevator of their hotel, examining her face. “This is happy, right? We can turn around right now and tell them we change our minds if this isn’t making you happy, kiddo.” 

She gnaws at her lip unsure exactly what to say, how to start, what to do without ruining everything. He hasn’t brought up having sex a few weeks ago, nor has he brought up breaking up with his girlfriend. She decides to start there. “You broke up with her,” she says after a long exhale. “Right after...right after you and I...Scott, I thought you were happy...I don’t want to be the cause of...I can’t be the reason you broke up with her. Scott you..you should be happy.” 

“But you aren’t,” he says simply, with a small shrug as they walk together off the elevator towards her hotel room. He says it like it’s no big deal. Like if she is unhappy he should be too. Like when they were kids and would share his treats with her with a smile and an easy, _I had more than you._ But this isn’t some spare halloween candy, it’s his life. 

“I’ll be fine,” she says, though she doesn’t always believe it she knows she will be eventually. She can live without him. It’s not always easy but she can she knows she can and she will. She does love a lot of what she does. There were even some days when she didn’t think of him at all and those were the days she didn’t feel the pull, the longing. She didn’t think of him, but when she did find those times she was passionate enough about a project to forget she’d find herself feeling like he was there with her, holding her hand like he’s done so often. She knows that eventually being apart will hurt less. 

He’s shaking his head. “Fine isn’t enough, kiddo. You deserve so much more than fine,” he says. They’ve reached her room and he holds out his hand for her keycard. “Can we talk about this inside?” he asks, he rocks on his heels and she notices how he clenches a fist at his side. 

She fishes her keycard from her purse and passes it to him so he can let them in. He holds the door for her to go first, she hesitates for just a moment because she doesn’t know what he’s going to say. Once he’s closed the door again they work in quiet for a few moments to take off their shoes and jackets. 

Finally she says something just to break the silence. “Scott, last month...we shouldn’t have...I shouldn’t...I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I didn’t want to ruin your relationship.” 

“Tess,” he breathes, taking a step toward her and finding her hands with his. “You didn’t ruin it. You didn’t do anything wrong. We’d already talked before that, about how it was probably the end we just hadn’t made it official yet,” he pauses taking another deep breath. “I’m the one who should be sorry. And I am. I am so, so sorry for putting you in that position...Fuck. I was being so selfish because I missed you so much. I wanted you to remember what it’s like between us...and I knew, I think I’ve always known that you would fall into me if I pulled. And I’m sorry for taking advantage of that...I just I wanted you to remember how good it feels between us.” 

She rubs her hand across her wrist, pushing hard against the mark there, that feels warmer and warmer with each passing second. “I can’t forget Scott. I have permanent reminders...literal scars on my skin…You can’t...you don’t understand, I can’t forget.” 

He rubs his hands over his face before taking a step back from her and sitting on the bed. He pats the space beside him, for her to sit next to him. She stays were she is, feet planted firmly on the floor until he says, “Please.” 

She sinks into the mattress next to him, shoulder to shoulder. She needs the contact to get through whatever this conversation is going to be, because they’ve never ever talked about it. About what her marks mean, about the fact that he gave them to her. About how they really feel about one another. It’s too much. She needs to feel him next to her, just like on the ice, in order to deal with it. 

“I know I can’t know exactly how you feel Tessa. I get that now. I didn’t before. But I do now,” he runs the pad of his thumb over the small red mark on her neck. “But I do feel it too. The connection between us. The parts of you that you’ve shared with me...I feel them.” He places his other hand over his heart, as if he’s showing her exactly where he feels them. “It feels like I carry you with me all the time. There’ve been a lot of times I’ve really needed that and I’m sorry that maybe I’ve needed too much from you in the past.” 

He pauses and his hand moves up to her cheek, to turn her face to look at him. He brushes away tears that had gathered under her eyes without her realizing. She’s breathing hard, unsure what to say. She always thought she was the one who needed him...but maybe…maybe there is a small chance that the pieces of herself she gave to him weren’t for her, weren’t to connect her to him, but were for his benefit. Because he needed her. 

“I love you,” he says softly, still running his thumb gently along the apple of her cheek. “I love you so much, you need to believe that. Not because I have to, not because of any of this. Tessa Jane I love you just because you are amazing. You’re beautiful, and kind, and generous. You give so much of yourself without asking for anything in return. And I love you. It hurts that you won’t let me in.” 

She swallows hard, letting her head fall against his shoulder. “Scott,” her voice sounds hoarse, cracked and a little broken. “Scott, if I...if I let myself go there...if I fall in love with you and give you my heart...if something happens, if this ends, if you leave...I won’t have anything left over of myself.” 

Scott pulls her in tight, wrapping her up in the safety of his arms. “I don’t want to take anything from you kiddo,” he kisses the top of her head. “I researched you know, the soul sharing. You’re so special, you know that right? And I’m so lucky to have you, I’m so lucky to be the one you shared yourself with. And I know I haven’t done a good job to this point but I promise you I cherish every single bit of your soul you’ve gifted me,” he squeezes her just a bit tighter against him. “You have my heart, you always have. But I don’t need you to give me yours, you’ve given me so much...just let me be yours. Let me love you.” 

She nods against his chest, a quiet, “Okay,” muffled by his shirt. 

“I love you,” he says again. 

She snuggles further into him, crawling into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and holds on tight. She doesn’t want to leave this moment, this warm embrace. He holds her as long as she needs. The conversation is far from over, there are years of feelings to work through but he loves her and she loves him--she doesn’t know how not to. For now that’s all that matters.

_Twenty-seven_

They haven’t had sex. Not since he made his big declaration. It’s sweet, mostly. But she’s really ready to break the celibacy. She’s been trying hard not to think of anything about their relationship as a need, but she _needs_ him, she really does. 

Later, after they finally broke apart that day in her hotel room, their first official day back as competitive Ice Dancers, Tessa was drowsy from the weight of her emotions. He’d kissed her long and hard--pouring years of feelings into her through their lips. But that was it. He said he didn’t want to go further, yet. He’d guessed, because he’s always known her better than she’s known herself, that because the marks he’d left seared into her skin were all from physical interactions that she worried he only needed her physically. That it was her body that he craved, that he desired. That he didn’t need the rest of her, her heart, her spirit. 

He wasn’t wrong in his guess. She’s felt for years that her body didn’t belong to her alone. That it was both hers and his. She hated feeling that, that she belonged to someone else, but the thoughts were there just the same. Not only had he marked her skin but she’d marked it for them both too, with her surgeries. Sometimes when she was really feeling alone, when the pull was too unbearable, she’d blame him for being so damn possessive sometimes. She wanted it to be his fault. Even though he didn’t ask for it either, didn’t even know, at least she thought he didn’t. 

Every time he’d said he needed her, or wanted her, or loved her it had always been immediately before or after some kind of physical intimacy. She’d known for a while that he felt a similar pull into her, physically, like she had to him. The strings attaching her soul to him tugging them together. It’s always felt like and inescapable gravity. But she was often afraid that’s all it was to him, an inexplicable force pulling him into her, making him crave her. 

He wanted her to feel confident in his love, that it meant more than that. That he loved every single facet of her. He’d been doing an excellent job so far. But she’s ready for more. It’s time. It is very much beyond time and she’s getting antsy. 

He’s in her kitchen making them both a nutritionist approved meal, humming along to the radio. She likes how easily they’ve fallen into this new friendship, new relationship. They’ve never spent this much time together off the ice, desperately trying to carve a space away from each other. There was time that was work and time that was _theirs_ without the other. She’s glad to have had that time, to form their own roots and identities, but this: going home together in the evenings, eating together, falling into easy conversation is so much better. They are getting to know each other like they never have before. 

She watches him work, chopping peppers in her kitchen, leaning against the wall of the hall in nothing but a towel. She’s just gotten out of a hot shower, her muscles sighing with relief after a day spent between the gym and the rink. But she could use another type of relief. 

She’s glad, she really is, that they’ve waited this time. That they built up the kind of relationship they never had before, before getting wrapped up in fiery passion of having each other’s bodies. She thinks that had they jumped right back to sex, that maybe they would have kept up the cycle that they were stuck in since the very first time. But she wants him now, and she trusts her own feelings. She knows how to tell the difference between what she really wants, what she’s ready for and what is simply the pulling of the other half of her. 

He told her once that it was like an elastic band and she kept pulling it as hard as she could. And when you pull on an elastic like that it is bound to either break and be damaged irrevocably, or snap back together hard if the slack loosened on either end. If she left it be, pulled only gently when she needed, gradually she stretching it out, the less and less she’d snap back into him, the less and less she’d feel a painful pull. Just a little tug reminding her that he was always there, keeping her safe and loved. 

As she watches him putter comfortably around her kitchen she is filled with such love for him. Not the needy desperate love she grew used to, a serene, blissful, all encompassing love. 

“Hi,” she says to catch his attention. 

He looks up at her with a grin, then looks to where she is holding her towel around herself and raises his eyebrows in question. “Hi yourself, what’s with the outfit?” 

“I love you,” is her answer. She hasn’t said it yet. Not since well before his big speech, since he asked her to open her heart up for him. He asked her not to, not until she was ready for all of it. He knows he loves her, and that she loves him, he said as much but she needed to take her time with it all. _You’ve given me everything Tessa,_ he said. _You’ve given me our career and gold medals, you’ve given me parts of your soul, your body. Let me give you my heart, but don’t offer yours until you’re ready.”_

“Oh,” he stops what he’s doing. Pushes the cutting board away. 

“I love you,” she repeats, dropping her towel on the floor. 

“Oh,” the second time it sounds like his breath has been taken from him. He spins around the room, checking to see if anything is turned on. “Fuck, Tess,” he draws out the s, staring gape mouthed at her. “I love you, too.” 

“Come show me,” she says, surprised by the huskiness of her own voice. 

“I love you,” he repeats, stepping around the island. 

She smiles, before leading him to the bedroom. He follows so closely behind that they haven’t even made through the door before his hands are on her. He smooths his palm over the mark on her hip, wrapping his hand around the front to pull her back flush against him. His thumb still skirts over the mark around her hip while he leans into her and kisses the mark on her neck, right over her pulse point. 

“Did they hurt?” he asks, lips against her skin. They still haven’t talked a lot about them, the marks on her skin, the road map of where he’s been. He kisses the spot tenderly, his voice just giving way to a hint of concern, fear maybe that he’d hurt her. 

She shakes her head, leaning back against him. “No, no, not really. They’re warm though...hot sometimes.” 

“Like a burn?” he asks. 

She shakes her head, “Sometimes--before--it could feel maybe a bit consuming...but never physically painful.” She turns her head to look at him, pressing her body back harder against his, feeling the heat of his chest flush against her bare skin. “Now they just feel nice...warm.” 

He hums against her, spreading his hand out over his brand on her hip and holding it firmly there while walking her towards the bed. “Feels warm.” 

“I always thought they were warm because of you,” she says, turning in his arms. “Because you always run so hot, and I’m always so cold. I felt like maybe you were sharing some of your heat with me.”

“I like that,” he says, his hands running up and down her back until sliding down to find her ass. “I like keeping you warm.” 

She feels like she’s melting against him, the heat of being pressed against him washes around her. But she’s ready for it now, it doesn’t consume her like fire licking up from the brands he’s left on her skin. Not anymore. It’s no longer too much, like it was when they were younger. 

He kisses her once before laying her back onto the bed, quickly tossing off his t-shirt and jeans before following her down, lying on his side next to her. He picks up her hand in his and plays with her fingers, tickles her palm by drawing circles around it. His thumb skirts over the mark on her wrist, the first from him. 

“I always liked holding your hand,” he says. “Even though I didn’t want to admit it. You made me feel a little calmer, just by being near you. Like sometimes the world was just so overwhelming and I wanted to be doing everything, going faster and faster. But then you held my hand and I felt relaxed.” 

She shifts closer to him, so their bodies are touching, she can feel the chill of the air against her naked skin, but when she’s touching him she’s warm again. “I felt that too. Right from the start I always felt better holding your hand. You gave me confidence. I think this first one, was just because we were always meant to be connected. Maybe it helped hold us together...always coming back to hold each others hands.”

He hums his assent and kisses the mark and then her lips. Just lightly, right on the corner of her mouth. 

“What about that one?” she asks. “What do you think that piece was for. When you kissed me at the carnival?”

He leans over her body and kisses her, humming against her lips, thinking. “"I didn't know anything when I was eleven, but I think deep down I knew I always wanted to feel you with me...besides I was actually really nervous to skate without you and I knew you were going to the ballet camp, I didn’t want you to forget me. And I wanted to see you smile. I don’t know why I thought kissing you would make you smile, but it did...Then I Always kinda felt like that shy little smile you get belonged to me."

She smiles up at him then, cheeks blushing. 

“Yeah, that one.” 

“So, you felt it too, then? All the times?” she asks.

He nods. “That time you kissed me, that was one, right? I wasn’t quite sure, when I realized what it was a few years ago. Because you can’t see the mark, not like the others. I felt something then though.” 

She laughs a bit, and nods. “Yeah, that was one. That, that was a lot. Too much maybe, I couldn’t handle what happened.” 

He nods again, thumb rubbing her bottom lip. “You were so assertive though. I liked it. It made me realize you weren’t really a little kid anymore and but you were still a kid at the same time, god you were what barely fourteen...that was maybe a little hard for me too.” 

She smiles up at him, “You liked the assertiveness though?” 

“Loved it,” he kisses her, longer this time, hands beginning to roam the front of her body. He kisses her mouth, then her face, then down her neck to her shoulder, stopping at the mark right there, in the crook of it. “This one, this was when I first realized that there was something different between us,” he nuzzles her neck. “Right here, is where I feel at home,” he presses his lips there again, lingering. “When I just need to breathe I feel like I’m pulled in, right here and I can feel your pulse under my lips. I know you’re here with me.” 

She’s aching for him now, she tilts her head to give him more access to her neck, arches her back toward him. He smiles against her skin, laughing a bit at her impatience. “I’m trying to have an important conversation here, T!” 

“And it is wonderful, and I love you for it,” she sighs, because she does love him for it. They need this. To talk about what each of these marks mean to them, but… “But could you fuck me already.”

He’s laughing again kissing his way up her neck back to her face. “Tessa Jane, you’re so bossy.” 

“I thought you liked that,” she smiles at him, manages a wink. 

He groans as he shifts to be over top of her. “I love it. But there is just one more, probably the most important.” His hand wraps around her hip, squeezing gently. “I thought I’d hurt you. I woke up and saw it, it was so red. I thought I hurt you...so I left.” 

She shakes her head, bites her lip. She isn’t sure she wants to talk about this one. The biggest piece of her, it’s too much to handle sometimes. And the memories from that time, too painful. But maybe he is right. Maybe they do need this before they can reconnect properly. “My mom saw it...that morning. She told me about what they meant. Soul sharing…and I thought if you felt the same why I did, if I marked you...or if you loved me that you be with me after,” she can feel the tears pricking her eyes. “I was so afraid.” 

His grip tightens on her hip, and he leans in to kiss her cheeks, under her eyes where the tears are gathering. “I’m so sorry...I never meant to hurt you. I loved you then, too. I just had no idea what to do about it. I was so afraid of losing you,” he breathes in deeply before continuing. “I didn’t know what would happen if you couldn’t skate again. I knew already I’d never skate with someone else, but I didn’t know what I’d do without it...without you.” 

She brushes her fingers across his cheek. “I felt the same things.” 

“I was selfish,” he says. “I needed one last part of you to hold on to. I wanted you and I was afraid without skating...there’d be nothing left of us.” 

She nods again. “I felt it too. I was so afraid of losing you. I didn’t know then, that I couldn’t.” 

“It’s a good thing,” he says, kissing her softly. “Tess, you have to let it be a good thing. I love you, we will always be connected, and you will always be in my heart no matter what.” 

She wraps her arms around him, pulling him down so he’s flush against her. She finds her hands roaming down his back to push at his boxers, needing more points of contact, more skin on skin. Her need for him, to have him inside her to feel connected has changed. Shifted from a deep physical itch, to something deeper something routed in her heart and soul. Like it’s finally time to put her pieces back together. 

“Please,” she says, as she gets his underwear over his hips. “I need to feel you. I need you inside me, please.” 

“Okay,” he says shifting above her. “Okay.”

_Twenty-eight_

They win the Olympics. They win the Olympics for a second time and it’s everything. She feels full. Whole like she has maybe never felt before. 

He wraps his arm around her, hand splaying across her belly and she puts her own over top. 

“I love you,” he whispers in her ear. “Thank you.”

She looks up at him, tears glistening in her eyes and she hopes that the same love, the same adoration she sees in his eyes is reflected back in hers. 

“I love you so much,” she says and she does. She is filled with so much love for him. That and his love and devotion for her fills up all the space she felt were empty before. With him next to her she feels unstoppable.

He still has bits and pieces of her soul, but she knows he keeps them safe in his heart. She knows they help him too, when he’s without her. And she believes, she really does, that the connection sharing her soul with him forged between them helped them win the Olympics. 

She doesn’t try to pull away anymore, she lets herself be in his orbit. And even when she’s off on her own, she lets herself feel the bits connected to him, knowing he’s always with her, loving her, supporting her, cherishing her even when they aren’t physically near.

They are soulmates, she thinks, standing next to him with matching gold medals around their necks. Even if he doesn’t share any of the marks with her, they are soulmates. Their story was always meant to end with them together.

  


_Seventy-two_

“Hi baby girl,” she whispers, rocking her little granddaughter back and forth, holding her close against her chest. She’s so fresh and new, it’s been a few years since the last grandbaby was born and Tessa forgot how tiny and delicate they are like this. 

“Mom,” her own youngest daughter, now in her late thirties and newly a mother of three herself, says from the doorway. “Are you two good in here while I go shower?” 

Tessa looks up at her own baby with bright smile. She looks so much like her dad, with her dark hair, kind hazel eyes and warm smile. “Of course sweetie, go take care of yourself. I’ve got her.” 

With that she is alone with the newest member of her family. “You just missed your grandpa,” she says to the baby in her arms, slowly stroking her back. “He was so looking forward to meeting you.” 

She can feel the tears gathering in her eyes and she lets them fall. It hasn’t been long and she still feels so acutely the void left inside herself from the bits of herself that left along with him. He gave her one small piece of himself though before he left, and it helps. 

His heart. The part of himself that he said always belonged to her, he left it with her. And she can still feel him here with her, like her heart has two separate beats, just like when they would hug before stepping on the ice and she could feel his heart beating through her chest and they would synchronize. 

They’d know it was close to the end. Pancreatic cancer, late stages. After the diagnosis, they curled up together in bed need to be as close to each other as possible. 

“You still have my heart,” he’d said. “Even when I’m not here anymore. My heart is always yours.” 

“You have half of me,” she’d answered. “Always.” 

She’d kissed his chest, right above his heart, feeling the thrumming of his pulse under the press of her lips. He’d held her tight. 

“I love you, kiddo,” he’d said and she felt it. She felt all his love pour into her, like she was drowning in it. And she knew what had happened. When she lifted her head there was a mark, right there over his heart. 

It had been 65 years since he first held her hand and he never gave it back. 65 years since the first time he marked her. She had 65 years with her soulmate. 65 years, is a long time, she thinks. But it will also never be enough. 

She rocks her granddaughter now, kissing her tenderly on top of her downy hair. It’s then that Penelope, her little grandbaby, roots around her chest, attempting to find something to latch onto. She tries in vain to suck Tessa’s collar bone and Tessa fixes a smile on her face and kisses the tip of her tiny ear. The tears that had collected on her face rolling into Penny’s hair. A tiny hand comes up and presses against the skin over her sternum, next to Penny’s mouth, and she feels strangely warm and at peace, something she hasn’t felt since she lost Scott.

She’s knows what happened before she even looks down to find the tiny red handprint on her chest. The perfect imprint of a little hand, with five perfect fingers, right next to the baby drool dripping from her skin to the collar of her shirt. Then she examines her sweet little granddaughter, who she already loves so much, who now also shares a tiny fragment of her soul.  She finds the tip of her ear crimson, where it had just a moment ago been sweet baby pink. It’s warm to the brush of her fingers. 

“You’re just like your grandma,” she says. “We’re connected now, you and me. I promise to keep your soul safe for as long as I’m here, I promise to cherish this part of you that you’ve given me, my littlest love.” _I promise to teach you everything I know about this precious gift,_ she thinks. 

It’s fitting, for her last mark to be so similar to her first. To share this with her granddaughter as she did her own grandmother. It’s a bit like completing a circuit. Like ending right where she began. 

Though it isn’t an ending, it’s a new beginning. She’ll have twenty more years watching Penny, and the rest of her and Scott’s grandchildren,  grow. 

  

  



End file.
